Strawberries and Blueberries Slice Heart Attack Rates
If you liked strawberries and blueberries before, you'll really like them now! According to a new study published in the American Heart Association's journal, Circulation, women aged 25-42 who ate at least 3 servings of strawberries and blueberries per week had 32% fewer heart attacks than women who ate the berries less than once a month. What's interesting is that even the women in the study whose diets were chock-full of other kinds of healthy fruits and vegetables didn't have this level of reduced heart attack risk.
Antioxidant Anthocyanins
The authors of the study suggested that the strawberry and blueberry-specific benefits could be related to the fruits' high levels of anthocyanins, which are powerful antioxidants. Anthocyanins are also vasodilators, meaning they help blood vessels expand to allow free flow of blood through the circulatory system.
Men Benefit Too
Can men also get these kinds of results? We believe they can. The study in question happened to be done on a group of nurses, all women, which is why the results only talk about women. We don't think it's necessary to wait till someone does the same study in men; the basic biochemical principles are the same.
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